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Published online 8 December 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1287
Column: Muse
Is the hunt for extraterrestrial life misguided?
Attempts to probe the Universe for advanced civilizations may be unscientific, says Philip Ball, but that shouldn't stop us.
Enrico Fermi's famous question about intelligent extraterrestrials — "Where is everybody?" — still taunts us today.
In New Mexico in the summer of 1950, Fermi was walking to lunch at Los Alamos National Laboratory with Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski and Herbert York1, discussing a recent spate of UFO reports.
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